In hopes of saving the fractious Copenhagen climate conference, the US is getting behind a plan to give $100 billion to poor countries in order to cut emissions, according to WSJ.

This is an idea that George Soros — among others — have been pushing for all week.

Global warming is, to some extent, a Western concern. So to some extent it makes sense that if the world’s developer countries are asking poorer countries to, well, keep themselves poor by not emiting so much, that developed countries would pay them.

But, there’s a big flaw in this idea (outside the fact that the developed world is broke), which is that money won’t bring an increased standard of living to the rest of the world, unless that money is used to buy stuff (plane tickets, cars, bigger houses, etc.), and all that stuff emits carbon.

The cash alone is useless. It’s only what these countries will do with the cash that will make a difference to their people.